Vessel
by The Mysterious Blind Bandit
Summary: Rose is gone, but she's left Pearl with something she may have forgotten to properly address. (Set sometime after the flashback portion of 'Three Gems and a Baby' with major spoilers for 'A Single Pale Rose'.)


The palanquin is the same as she left it last time, save for a bit more of the inevitable, oh-so-Earthly growth over and around it. It never changes much, the place Rose keeps- _kept_ trying her best to very deliberately forget, like she does- _did_ with so many other things. But Pearl remembers everything with hologram-perfect clarity, and has never been very good at the game of pretending something didn't happen.

The thought makes her stop her approach and shuffle in place, restless fingers playing against the skirt of her recent regeneration, fresh grass playing against her shins. Is that why Rose-? Is that why all the humans, all the time, one after another- because they couldn't possibly have known, and Pearl was only ever a reminder, dragging them both down, whatever she did?

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

She goes to the Strawberry Fields to brood over their endless losses, and runs a wistful hand over the dulled edges of a halberd she remembers an old comrade wielding. Leaps up onto the floating islands to more easily recall the time when it seemed she and Rose were the only two Gems in all the world. When she feels like indulging in melancholy, she goes to the Galaxy Warp and sits on the edges of cold, cracked, eternally dim and lifeless warp pads, and looks up, up, up, into the now-unreachable.

And sometimes she comes here, where she knows she will never be anything but perfectly alone.

There is a breeze today, coming down the mountain, rustling those peculiar pink flowers. The sun sinking beneath the horizon casts it all into darker hues, purple and lavender in place of bright pink, just like- just like that night, when-

The words she's never been able to speak are a bitter residue in the back of her throat. Her hands tighten into fists at her sides, arms stiff and kept resolutely still, even as she knows that, should they decide to betray her, no amount of resistance would help. But it's worth a try, isn't it? Now that Rose is… gone, now that nothing will ever be the same again, perhaps this has changed, too. Pearl takes a deep, unnecessary breath, and attempts.

"I-!"

She barely manages to make a sound before her own hand flies up and clamps over her mouth, the force of it making her stumble to her knees in the dew-covered grass.

By the time the hand relents, after all thoughts of _Pink Diamond_ and _I struck her down_ and _she was never shattered at all_ and _Rose is- Rose was-_ are thoroughly suppressed once again, it is drenched with tears.

The mounting feeling is in turns hot and cold, stabbing through where Pearl staunchly refuses to shapeshift appropriate human organs, and bubbling up into a single searing thought.

 _How could she do this to me?_

Oh, it helps from very little to not at all, but it feels awfully good, sometimes, to just allow herself to feel _wronged_. And so easy, too, every time Rose leaves, like she does, like she now did, possibly forever - and leaves Pearl wondering, questioning, wallowing in her own apparent inadequacy.

 _Was I not worthy of the trust?_

Trust- trust is faith in another, and an exchange of power. A pearl have power over a diamond! A ridiculous thought - a dangerous, subversive, radical thought. A thought Rose would have - should have? - _loved_.

It crawls along her skin and up her spine, the unnameable - the _anger_. Because she would have! Because if she- if Rose had _asked_ , she'd have happily gone down on one knee and sworn off speech forever, if needed. Bound herself in directives and imperatives and orders and divine oaths, had them seared into the very core of her gem. Sworn to keep all secrets, from the sweetly, smilingly whispered _it'll be our secret_ over an odd Earth flower smuggled into courts and council chambers, to the world-shattering truths that would make a diamond shudder.

But Rose hadn't asked; she'd done, and taken, and gotten what she wanted, and that was it. No looking back, never to be spoken of again, and Pearl, despite that soft _please-_ thrown in among the commands, was left without even the sweet illusion of choice.

 _We'll both finally be free._

Another beautiful, dangerous thought. And so like Rose, to fail to at all acknowledge the vast chasm Homeworld struck between them, to focus on the unlikely things they shared and remain almost resolutely oblivious to what set them apart from one another.

Oh, and how Rose would wax poetic! How enchanted she had always been, even by the most mundane of things Pearl had to say. _I love how outspoken you are!_ _I love hearing your voice, I love hearing you speak your mind._ _That wonderful, brilliant mind._

Well, so much for that-! Pearl's traitorous hands relinquish their duty, finally, and clench in the diaphanous material of her skirt. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

And then swirling, treacherous, waiting just under the surface, waiting to drag her down to depths she tries very hard to keep locked away, safe and very carefully, very deliberately not thought about.

 _Was it worth it?_

So much she would never see again - so much she gladly gave up, for Rose, for her cause and all their companions, for freedom on this odd, wild planet. But Rose is gone, and so is most everyone else, and all that's left is… this. There is Garnet, and there is Amethyst, and there is even… the child. Steven. But they all feel so very, very far away, and Pearl doesn't know where to even begin, when all she seems capable of lately is _remembering_.

—

Rose's tears have done their part. Pearl's preferred sword-arm is whole and her legs, when she tries them despite Rose's gesture to stay still and stay down, wobble only a little and hold her up.

Rose grabs her arm anyway, and palms her other shoulder as if to steady her. "You can't keep doing this, Pearl."

"No," Pearl begins, hoarsely, " _you_ can't keep doing this."

"What are you talking about? That axe almost went right through your gem! If Garnet hadn't managed to stop that carnelian in time, you would have- you-" Rose draws her hands back, and tries to stifle a rush of sobs - a waste, now that there is nobody to heal. "I can't have you risking yourself like that for me, Pearl. I don't need you to! I thought we were over this, it's been so long…"

And it has indeed been long. And Rose is many things, but particularly observant is not one of them - still, how could it have escaped her that it was the first real battle since Pink Diamond's… shattering? How far the stakes have risen, and how much they have gambled on this one lie-

"Rose, you have to understand. If you make a mistake, if they dissipate your form, or- or capture your gem, they'll-"

They'll know, everyone will _know_ -

The tingle is already running down her freshly healed arm, the constructed muscles of it tightening, twitching, preparing. And so she struggles to choose words that won't make her own limbs turn against her.

"Pearl?"

Gentle hands fold over hers and still their trembling, and they are not _those_ hands (but they are, they are, they _are_ -), no, these are soft, bare, and battle-worn, and oddly warm, and would never hurt her. Not… not knowingly.

And does she even know what she's done?

Pearl hasn't shown her yet, these true effects of her last command, and she isn't sure she wants to know if Rose knew all along what it entailed. She herself is only aware thanks to her endless curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and the experiment she conducted on her own, that left her feeling oddly hollow. But it is convenient, isn't it, if, for example, she were to be captured and interrogated, she couldn't-

Pearl pulls away.

 _Think of me_ , she wants to say, too, _think of what_ _ **I**_ _will lose_.

If the truth were to come out, she would never again be anything but Pink Diamond's pearl, tagging along, following her orders, no matter how absurd. Nothing she did, on Rose's behalf or her own, would really matter.

There's no denying that being the Pearl Who Belongs To No One - or the Terrifying Renegade, depending on who it is you ask - feels… good. A delightful, dangerous rush. The mere thought of the way everyone would look at her _differently_ if they were to find out, the condescending pity, or the casual disregard…

Intolerable.

Would anyone stop to listen to her, dare to believe her when she tries to explain that no, it's not _like_ that! It's not like that at all, Rose would never treat her like- Rose would _never_ -

Except for the one time she did.

"Pearl?" Rose, again, with mounting concern.

"It's nothing," Pearl sighs, defeated. "Just… please, be careful. We're so close."

"I know," Rose grasps both her hands again with a wide, teary smile, excitement and anticipation quickly replacing worry, and Pearl stops herself from pulling away, fighting so very hard to focus on… before, when those hands over hers brought nothing but comfort. "It won't be long now, not when there's already rumours of a retreat."

—

Pearl tries again, and is foiled before her lips can even finish closing around the _p-_.

She's crying again - or still? - but what are a few tears compared to the veritable torrents over the past months of being faced with the horrible inevitability of a life without Rose and the _anticipation_ -

Her hands relent once more.

The mixture of grief and anger and odd relief and relief denied all at once is heady and dizzying. Rose can't be completely gone, can she, if her orders are still in place? Or if she is, but Pearl is still bound, then will Pearl _ever_ be released from this? And then, creeping: does she even really want to be, if it means there are still things - awful, precious things - binding her and her alone to Rose?

But then, of course… this way, she realises, this way the child will never know, either. And so Rose has achieved what she has always wanted: the ultimate fresh start, true reinvention, and the pinnacle of _forgetting_ , never, ever looking back.

And what, Pearl thinks, what does _she_ even want anymore?

She plucks the flower closest to her knee, the bloom new and pink and drenched in eerie echoes of memories, but without a single answer for her. She moves to get up, straighten out her skirt, and return to the others at the Temple, hopefully to as few questions about her absence as possible.

By the time she's made the long walk down the overgrown mountain path to the warp pad, all that's left is pink petals crushed against her palm, and she lets the wind have them.


End file.
